In 1853, a memoir of James Fontaine was published, accompanied by
letters from members of his family. He was a Huguenot, who had settled
in Virginia, and his descendants have been among the most distinguished
of her citizens.

The letters of his sons to relatives in England are very instructive. I
quote from one from Peter Fontaine, dated March 2, 1756, in which he
regrets that the English had not intermarried with the Indians:

'But here methinks I can hear you observe, 'What! Englishmen
intermarry with Indians?' But I can convince you that they are
guilty of much more heinous practices, more unjustifiable in the
sight of God and man (if that indeed may be called a bad practice);
for many base wretches among us take up with negro women, by which
means the country swarms with mulatto bastards, and these
mulattoes, if but three generations removed from the black father
or mother, may, by the indulgence of the laws of the country,
intermarry with the white people, _and actually do every day so
marry_.'

This is the testimony of a Virginian gentleman, made a century ago; I do
not care to more than point to the possible infusion of other than
English blood into the veins of the gentlemen who desire to adopt the
Cavalier as their national device.

We now proceed to examine the social position, prior to the emigration,
of those Englishmen who did in a certain degree colonize the present
Slave States, and in a much greater degree colonize New England. I must
confess having long wondered at the persistent statement of Englishmen
that the citizens of the United States were the offspring of the
vagabonds and felons of Europe. Having examined the history of the
families of New England with much interest, and finding therein no
confirmation of this idea, I had held it but the outbreak of prejudice
and ignorance. Yet since the present rebellion has caused so much
inquiry into the antecedents of the Southerners, I find that the
assertion is well founded, but that it concerns those who have hitherto
been loudest in their claims to a distinguished ancestry.

I find among the items of monthly intelligence in the _London Magazine_,
the records of felons sentenced to transportation to his majesty's
plantations in America, and often the different colonies named. I find a
calculation incidentally made, about 1750, that 500 culprits were hung
annually in Great Britain--and bloody as the